Chapter 11 Aurelia #3
Now, I was speechless, realizing I had no idea who I was sleeping with.
“So yeah, a lot of people want me dead.” He smiled the way he did at the beach, the way he did over breakfast, like we were talking about something far more agreeable than this. Like this was some kind of joke. “I’m clean, by the way. Got checked before I came home.”
“I hope I can say the same.” Enzo had been sleeping with someone else for months, but if her husband had been faithful to her, then I doubted anything had spread among the four of us.
“I’m not worried about it.” He took another drink of his wine, finishing off the glass.
In the back of my mind, I suspected Constantine was associated with nefarious people, though I didn’t realize how deeply invested he was.
But when he said he wasn’t a threat to people like me, I believed him.
Because he’d been nothing but a gentleman—except when he fucked me.
“You said for the last nine years you’ve been floating around.
What about before that?” I wasn’t sure why he’d specified the time period.
Like something significant had happened before that.
“I was in a relationship.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t contain my surprise because he seemed too elusive for anyone to keep. Too prized for anyone to afford.
“But men like me don’t do that, right?” he said with a smirk.
“How old were you at the time?”
“Twenty-four.”
He was a bit older than me. About five years. No wonder I found his company so refreshing. They said your thirties were the best decade of your life. You just stopped giving a damn what anyone thought of you—and Constantine was the epitome of I don’t give a fuck.
I wanted to say he was young at the time, but that was just five years ago for me, so it wasn’t that young.
He didn’t look old by any means, but his experience and wisdom were obvious in every word he spoke.
“Can I ask what happened? You haven’t been in a relationship in nine years, so something happened. ”
He was quiet for a while, sitting on the question as he decided what to do with it.
“You don’t have to tell me—”
“There’s a lot to it. It’s complicated. But I’ve known her forever.
I always knew we would get together, but I didn’t want to pursue that until I was ready to commit.
So when I was ready, I went for it. We were together for about a year before she fucked up.
” He said all of it in the same tone, like he didn’t harbor any negative feelings about it.
But it had been almost ten years, so that was plenty of time to move on.
“How did she fuck up?”
“That’s where it gets complicated. She kissed my brother, thinking it was me . . . but chose not to disclose that. Then it got messy and soapy, and they kinda had this thing between them while I was oblivious to all of it. My brother is the one who came clean about it—not her. Then we were done.”
She’d had Constantine wrapped around her finger, and she . . . threw him away? I would never understand people who did stupid shit like that. It selfishly made me feel better, because if Constantine could get cheated on, then it really could happen to anyone—including me. “That is complicated.”
“That’s not the reason I haven’t been serious with anyone. I just haven’t met anyone I want to commit my mind, body, and soul to.” He’d just shared a really sad story, but he was starting to look at me with that intensity again, like I was the only thing that mattered.
It made me lose my breath—as always. “What happened with your brother?”
“I was fucking mad as hell for a while. He was an arrogant little shithead who instigated it. When she mistook him for me, he could have stepped out of her kiss, said who he was, but he’d always had a thing for her too, so he went for it.
That was a separate issue that pissed me off even more because he took away her consent.
She never would have kissed him if she’d known he wasn’t me. ”
“How could she confuse you that easily? Unless you’re—”
“Twins.” He nodded. “Yes.”
“There are two of you?” I asked in disbelief.
He smirked. “Don’t get too excited. I don’t do threesomes . . . at least not with men.”
“I still feel somehow she should have known since she was intimate with you.”
“Sometimes I wonder if it was intentional. If he wore my clothes to purposely confuse her.”
“You can’t ask him?”
His eyes flicked away for the first time during the conversation.
“If she’d just told me what happened, I would have forgiven her and we could have moved on, but she didn’t.
And then they continued to have these moments together.
Stares across the room that I noticed but didn’t know what to make of.
Private moments when I was nowhere around.
I trusted her implicitly. If there was nothing to share, it’s because there was nothing to share.
She broke that, and trust can’t be rebuilt—despite what some people believe.
” His eyes remained shifted away, like he was lost in the memory he continued to share.
“I was gonna marry her. Had always wanted to see more of the world, live in Rome, Istanbul, and Paris, but she was enough of a reason for me to stay. We would have had a bunch of kids together and had a quiet life in Taormina with our families.” He gave a shrug.
“That event forever changed the trajectories of our lives.”
I felt empathy for him because I knew how it felt to be betrayed by someone you loved. To watch them lie to you without an ounce of shame. To be reduced to ashes when they set your heart on fire. “I’m sorry.”
“I know you are, sweetheart.” His eyes came back to me, and then slowly, the smile stretched his lips.
“But I think it worked out for the best.” The warmth of his smile reached his eyes as he continued to stare at me in a way no one else ever had.
Like I was all he could see, even when we weren’t together.